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Monday, November 16, 2015

Can Obama Level with the People?

By Robert Parry

The
atrocities in Paris, killing more than 120 people, have brought forth
the usual condemnations against terrorism and expressions of sympathy
for the victims, but the larger question is whether this latest shock
will finally force Western leaders to address the true root causes of
the problem.

Will President Barack Obama and other leaders finally
level with the American people and the world about what the underlying
reasons for this madness are? Will Obama explain how U.S. “allies” in
the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, have been
fueling this Sunni extremism for years? Will he dare recognize that
Israeli repression of the Palestinians is a major contributing factor,
too?

On a practical level, will Obama finally release those 28 pages from
the congressional 9/11 report that addressed evidence of Saudi support
for the hijackers who attacked New York and Washington in 2001?

Does
he have the courage to explain how this scourge of Sunni terrorism can
be traced back even further to the late 1970s when President Jimmy
Carter started a small-scale covert operation in Afghanistan to
destabilize a Moscow-backed secular regime in Kabul and that President
Ronald Reagan then vastly expanded the program with the help of the
Saudis, pouring in a total of $1 billion a year and giving rise to Saudi
militant Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda?

Can Obama be convinced
that telling hard truths to the American people is not only vital to a
democratic Republic in a philosophical way but can have the practical
effect of creating crucial public support for rational policies? Will he
realize that propaganda schemes or “strategic communications” may be clever short-term tricks to manipulate the American people but they are ultimately counterproductive and dangerous?

Will
Obama finally take on Official Washington’s well-entrenched
neoconservatives and their “liberal interventionist” junior varsity by
challenging their innumerable false narratives? Will he pointedly blame
the neocons and the liberal hawks, including those who run the editorial
pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times, for the disastrous
Iraq War? Will he take on the “deep state” dug in at the big-name think
tanks, not just at neocon havens like the American Enterprise Institute
but at the center-left Brookings Institution?

Can the
President muster the courage to ally himself with the American people,
arming them with real information, so they can act like true citizens in
a Republic rather than cattle being herded toward the slaughterhouse?
Can he shake his own elitism or his fear of social ostracism to somehow
become a true leader in his last year in office, rather than a timid
follower of the prevailing “group think”?

Just because the
“important people” have fancy credentials and went to the “right”
schools, doesn’t mean that they have any monopoly on wisdom. Indeed, in
my nearly four decades covering Official Washington, these “smart” folks
have been wrong a lot more than they have been right. A leader of
historic dimensions recognizes that reality and takes on the
know-it-alls. In this case, a leader who enlists the American public by
giving them reliable information could change this depressing dynamic.

If
Obama could muster such courage and show trust in the people, he could
bend the prevailing false narratives in the direction of truth and
reality. On a practical level, he could help make the current Syrian
peace talks succeed by stopping his endless repeating of the
neocon/liberal-hawk mantra blaming President Bashar al-Assad for the
entire mess and insisting that “Assad must go.” [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Hidden Origins of Syria’s Civil War.”]

Twist Some Arms

Instead,
Obama could twist the arms of his Saudi, Qatari and Turkish “friends”
to get them to halt their financing and military support for Sunni
jihadists associated with Al Qaeda and its various spin-offs, like the
Islamic State and al-Nusra Front. And he could work cooperatively with
Russian President Vladimir Putin to squeeze concessions out of both the
Assad regime and the U.S.-financed “moderate” opposition so a unity
government can begin to restore order in Syria and isolate the
extremists.

Once some security is achieved, the Syrian people
could hold elections to decide their own future and pick their own
leaders. That should not be the business of either Obama or Putin.

As
part of this effort, Obama could finally release the U.S. intelligence
analyses on both jihadist funding and the circumstances surrounding the
lethal sarin attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, which the Obama
administration hastily blamed on Assad’s regime although later evidence
pointed toward a likely a provocation by Sunni extremists. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria Sarin Case.”]

To
create crucial space for cooperating with Putin, Obama also could let
the American people in on the reality about the Ukraine crisis in 2014,
which was used by the neocons and liberal hawks to drive a wedge between
Obama and Putin. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

U.S.
intelligence analysts know a lot about key turning points in that
conflict, including the Feb. 20, 2014 sniper attacks, which set the
stage for ousting elected President Viktor Yanukovych two days later,
and the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which
was used to build an anti-Putin hysteria. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17: The Dog Still Not Barking.”]

I’m
told that these tragedies became propaganda weapons to deploy against
Assad, Yanukovych and Putin rather than horrific crimes that deserved
serious investigation and accountability. But whatever the ultimate
conclusion about who is to blame for these crimes, why has Obama
withheld from the American people what U.S. intelligence analysts know
about those three incidents?

It was Obama, after all, who talked
so much about “transparency” and trusting the American people as a
candidate and during his first days in office. But since then, he has
conformed to the elitist Orwellian approach of managing our perceptions
rather than giving us the facts.

Yet, if Obama could get his
cooperation with Putin back on track – recognizing how useful it was in
2013 when Putin helped Obama get Assad to surrender all his chemical
weapons and assisted in wresting important concessions from Iran about
its nuclear program – then the two powers could also weigh in on
securing a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians,
another major irritant to peace in the region.

Indeed, it appears
that the possibility of Obama and Putin working together to force the
Israelis to make meaningful concessions for peace was a factor in the
neocon determination to turn an eminently manageable political dispute
in Ukraine – over the pace of its integration into Europe without
rending its ties to Russia – into the dangerous frontlines of a new Cold
War.

The neocons and liberal hawks outmaneuvered Obama who fell
in line with the Putin-bashing, all the better to fit within
Official Washington’s in-crowd.

Thus, the Syrian crisis was left
to fester with Obama acquiescing to neocon/liberal-hawk demands for
arming and training “moderate” rebels although the President recognized
that the idea was a “fantasy.” He also resisted some of the more extreme
ideas, like an outright U.S. military invasion of Syria framed as a
humanitarian “safe zone.”

But the Paris tragedy is another
reminder that it is well past time for Obama to resurrect his helpful
relationship with Putin and restore the teamwork that held such promise
toward settling conflicts through negotiations, along the lines of the
Iran nuclear deal.

If Obama were to choose that route – which
could be implemented through a combination of truth-telling to the
American people and pragmatic big-power diplomacy with Russia – he could
at least start addressing the underlying causes of the violence tearing
apart the Middle East and now spreading into Europe.

Or will
Obama’s reaction to the Paris attacks be just more of the same – more
tough-guy talk about “resolve,” more “targeted” killings that slaughter
many innocents as “collateral damage,” more tolerance of
Saudi-Turkish-Qatari support for Sunni militants in Syria and elsewhere,
more acceptance of hard-line Israeli repression of the Palestinians,
more giving in to neocon/liberal-hawk demands for “regime change” in the
neocons’ preferred list of countries?

If the history of the past
seven years is any guide, there’s little doubt which direction President
Obama will choose. He will go with Official Washington’s flow; he’ll
worry about what the editorialists at the Post and Times might think of
him; he’ll accommodate the neocons and liberal hawks who remain
influential inside his own administration. In short, he’ll continue down
the road toward destruction.

~ Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.